>this is objectively verifiably bullshit lol. of the 40 seats
>that dems flipped from red to blue in a house dem wave
>year...'sanders wing' candidates won...*1* (katie porter).
>and that 1 seat was in orange county ca where a dem wave wiped
>out the entire repub party. so she just rode a much larger
>trend.

of the 40 they flipped, yes, that's about right, but states that flip are battleground states, purple states, whatever you want to call them typically. obviously a moderate is going to play better there and that they ran moderates in places like north carolina was one of the better strategic moves by the DNC. so that sort of skews the terms and obscures the fact that sanders definitely had an influence on candidates for office from the DNC, including some successful ones, and he's also moved the centrists into at least feigning progressiveness.

>'sanders wing' candidates blew 2 winnable elecions in ne (kara
>eastman) and ks (james thompson).

yea, thompson was disappointing, i thought he had a very ripe ground for a win there.

>the dem takeover of the house was lead by moderate candidates
>who didnt run on medicare for all, free public college, etc.
>the 2 dem senate flips in az and nv were won by moderate
>candidates as well. a moderate also flipped a senate seat in
>al in a special election the year earlier.

again we are talking flips in places like az, nv, nc, va, etc. i am not advocating some communist takeover of the DNC. you've got to play to win. in states like those, that still means straddling the middle. we are talking about a national level here though, and in the left-leaning battleground states, they can go a little further left that they can in those places.

>because those are the types of candidate that are necessary to
>win the large majority of competitive elections in this
>country. regardless of what your favorite youtube news
>channel tells you.

it's pretty funny because i watch zero broadcast news and actually work for a huge print publication.

>in fact...i can make the case that association with sanders
>actually hurt stacey abrams in ga and andrew gillum in fl...as
>attacks against them as 'socialists' peeled away some moderate
>and independent voters that they otherwise would have gotten.
>
>like andrew gillum lost by a wider margin than bill
>nelson...despite polling better the entire campaign and being
>projected to carry the entire ticket.

how does that correlate with sanders? i am not disagreeing, i'd like to hear your argument. gillum and abrams both got torpedoed by right-wing corruption and bigotry, but i am all ears if you want to tell me how their association with progressives was what really did them in.

>the 'sanders wing' candidates like aoc mostly just won
>non-competitive general elections in already-blue districts.

i don't discount flipping seats from red to blue but similarly you shouldn't discount flipping seats from centrist to progressive, at least if you were on board with sanders's ideas in 2016. that's also important work, as is pushing the remaining parts of the DNC establishment left.

>i mean...in a midterm with supercharged election turnout
>across the nation...aoc only won her district with 110k total
>votes. there was like 25% general election turnout for her
>lol.

yes, we know, anyone who read beyond the lede in a story about her is well aware. regardless of how she got there, her ascent has been significant, her presence has done as much as some congresspeople's entire terms do. i am just not following your desire to belittle what has been a pretty significant impact inside of a short time here.

>to put it in perspective...the last general election that joe
>crowley (her primary opponent) won...he got 140k votes. over
>30k more votes than her.
>
>the only reason she was even in the general is because she won
>a sleep primary with *14%* turnout.
>
>thats what you think the entire national party should model
>itself after? lol

clearly it's not but un-earthing more candidates who can win without corporate money, connect with a wide array of voters and push issues that differentiate them in substantive ways from the GOP are important goals to pursue. there is nothing wrong with celebrating them. do you think the GOP was nitpicking and infighting about how Trump won? fuck no, and it was a lot more controversial and less conventional than anything we are describing here.

>so what does it say that bernie only evenly split white
>working class voters with clinton and performed considerably
>worse with minorities?

again, you're looking at two very different opponents in a primary as opposed to a general. i just don't think you can extrapolate the results like that.

>why would he be the solution these party problems?

he shouldn't be. like doc said, exporting his ideas into a different person with some further refinement would be ideal. that's a fantasy. is he still the closest thing the party has to someone with actual liberal policies and charisma? probably. if you have someone else in mind, again, i would love to hear all about them.

>like where are folks getting this unrealized enthusiasm for
>bernie within these demographic groups from? how was bernie
>gonna ramp up their turnout in the general when he couldnt
>even do that in a primary where they make up a larger
>proportional share of the electorate?
>
>make it make sense to me lol.

ok but you're ignoring, for example, voters under 35, which is a bigger bloc than some of the groups you're mentioning. two keys now to winning elections are energizing your base (polarized environment) and getting traditional non-voters to vote (something both he and Trump did, a lot of people want to hear *something* and that something said with *conviction*).


>bernie hasnt brought an influx of voters into the party any
>more than the national party itself. 2018 primary and general
>election results showed this.
>
>only 2 dem incumbents lost their primary. which is literally
>the average for an election year. there was no major
>electoral shockwave in the party. once again...this is bernie
>personality folklore.

that's a look at one election, meanwhile taking the longer view they lost the senate, they lost ground in terms of governors and mayors, etc. they were in crisis and there was denial about that crisis that is starting to fade. it isn't a one-size-fits-all solution and some point you've decided i am some bernie bro advocating a total shift left at every rung of the party. i am not but i do find it strange that one-time supporters are looking to pluck date against and blame the guy that resonated with them just a short while ago. it's almost like the real bernie bros who just cannot accept the fact that he had his own shortcomings and that he wasn't outright robbed by superdelegates and the media and whomever else they want to blame. that sanders is running again neither represents salvation nor doom, but you sure as hell seem to be sold on the latter.

>tom steyers 'next gen america' organization registered more
>college age and millennial voters than every chapter (state
>and national) of 'our revolution' combined. by multiples of
>ten.
>
>how come tom isnt mentioned as a pivotal figure in progressive
>folklore?

there's a lot of people doing great work and as usual we are prisoners of the same messiah syndrome that would have us believe jackie robinson was the only black baseball player in the '40s or that every answer to a question about south american history is bolivar. but let's not let backlash knock things even further out of perspective either.


>'bitter centrists' make up more of the party than
>'progressives' lol.

not really, i think you have several sub-groups within the party and not all centrists are bitter either. but even so you've got a solid block who are going to vote dem and you don't sweat them too much. it's more looking at people would vote dem if they voted but may not or people who wouldn't vote at all but might be compelled to give a shit by someone with sound ideas and charisma. whether or not the candidate that can appeal to those groups is sanders this time around, i can't say for certain, but there is an argument that he could be that candidate. in this field, i don't see too many others with a compelling argument for. i think harris is a potentially strong candidate, but i get the sense she is building herself up on this stage for future elections more so than gunning for it all right now.

>why would the people who win the overwhelming majority of the
>partys elections be bitter? wouldnt that be the losers (like
>claiming the primary election was rigged against you)?

oh there are definitely bitter AF bernie bros out there. and again, the bitter centrists are more the people at the top of the party, the corporate shills who eat off populism. their mask was lifted by the results in 2016 and the path to them, and they feel their hold loosening.

now i do think there is another group of centrists that i would consider more frustrated than embittered by the party's shift left. they are well-meaning people often with a very sound concept of how government operates. i just think they have a bit of an antiquated and oversimplified idea of the difference between the two parties. they still consider republicans to be defenders of the status quo, and democrats to be those who seek to incrementally implement change and open up the system. i would argue that more recently, republicans have been aggressive reactionaries and that democrats have been relegated to defenders of the status quo, who also have a tendency to turn desired social change into a political commodity, and then parade that as progress.

>i will never understand this notion that the democratic party
>is being held hostage by the *majority* of its voters.

again i don't think we can divide the party along a single line and i have never said it was "held hostage." i do think there is a sentiment among the base that is to the left of the controlling figures in the party, and that's nothing new. look at the healthcare bill in 94 and certainly obama care. most of the DNC voters were in favor of a single-payer plan yet in 94 it wasnt even considered and in 09 it was sacrificed at the altar of practicality under threat that the bill wouldn't pass at all. so yes, i do feel that the party is to the right of its constituency and has been for some time.

>why do yall feel entitled to control the destiny of a
>political party that you cant win a majority of voters in?
>and why are your candidates better for the party than the ones
>that the majority of voters choose?

so who is "y'all" exactly? we are looking at a very limited sample of one primary and a handful of mid-term races and drawing conclusions. the party is definitely moving left and i don't see the need to panic and thwart that. further i think right now the voting public as a whole--and i don't think this is a good thing, but it's real--is in that mode that Chomsky described many years ago. He said something to the effect of his going to lecture halls and getting ovations, knowing that he could have said the exact opposite things with the same vigor and had the same reaction. that has heightened today. for whatever reason, people crave strong ideas, and in trump's case their crave authoritarian ones (nothing new, centuries of it are detailed in Fromm's Escape from Freedom). that same craving can be satisfied by someone with big ideas on the left, maybe not as easily, but it can be. can it be satisfied by someone from the center? probably not IMHO.

>i continue to ask this...but seriously...how does any of this
>make sense in your head?

straw men abound, man, but it's cool, you are the smartest guy in the room! your trophy is in the mail! part of me wants to say fuck this, but instead i'd rather look for common ground because obviously we are two people with similar interests and concerns. that's something that the party should be doing as well.